There are three types of neighbors in Ripoll right now: he who does not care, the one who is happy, and the one who mourns and hugs with his friends down the street, as if a relative had died.
“A sector of the town is going through a duel,” says Carme Brugarola, a neighbor of the municipality and promoter of Teixim Ripoll, a platform that aims to agglutinate the citizen opposition to Sylvia Orriols, the mayor of an independence ultra -right that governs the people.
Everything was ready for a draft change in this town of 10,700 inhabitants located on the skirt of the Pyrenees. PSC, ERC and Junts had articulated an agreement to unseat Orriols and form a coalition that would manage the municipality to the following municipal elections.
A call from the National Directorate of Junts, however, made the motion of censure derail. And Orriols, who had lost a matter of trust to which he submitted to approve the budgets, saw how his play obtained prize: the accounts will move forward next Monday automatically, racing what remains of the legislature.
“Junts is very afraid of us,” Orriols said last Thursday while climbing the city council stairs. “I think, as we go, we will be able to steal many votes in the next municipal.”
What might seem a simple local policy soap opera in Rural Catalonia has echoes that go further. It shows Juns’ discomfort before the rise of a xenophobic force that, according to all polls, is stealing voters. And, in turn, it is the rupture for the first time of the sanitary cord that all forces, except PP and Vox, agreed to impose the Catalan Aliança, the party commanded by Orriols.
“All the solutions were bad,” says a person who has been part of Junts in Ripoll for years. “Either we endorsed or turned it into a martyr, it must be recognized that [Orriols] It has been skilled, ”he summarizes.
The decision by the Junts Directorate to save Orriols, taken after conducting a survey to the residents of Ripoll, has meant a new crisis in local formation, once Alfa party in the municipality and now lacking leadership since Jordi Munelll , mayor between 2011 and 2023, he left his position.
The one who was a candidate in 2023, Manoli Vega, left his minutes last September and does not want to know anything about politics. His successor, Maria Soldevila, did not even appear at the press conference to defend the decision to keep Orriols. In the party nobody gives its continuity.
The truth is that, today, there is no candidate in Ripoll that shade Orriols, grown in regional surveys and confident in his municipality after the failure of the motion.
A tired and divided town
The polarization around Orriols and the boredom for being news are the two feelings that define the mood of the neighbors. “This is too small to endure so much,” replies an older lady who only agrees to identify her as Maria Teresa. “You have to understand that we all know each other.”
Ripoll has gone from being a quiet municipality at the foot of the mountain to be in La Picota. First because here the kids who perpetrated the attacks of the Ramblas in 2017 were born and radicalized because, after the wounds of terrorism, the people became the first laboratory of the Catalan independence ultra -right.
The neighbors are tired to the point that many claim not to be from Ripoll not to answer questions. At least half a dozen sources – some political positions, social workers, representatives of cultural and neighborhood associations … – have refused to participate in this report.
“Fear has been installed,” says Brugarola, which in the past was mayor of ICV. “And the people’s cohesion will be increasingly difficult.” There are neighbors who explain that even some restoration stores are known as “Pro Orriols” or “Anti Orriols”, in a fracture that other interviewees do not consider that it is serious.
Lin Xiaoxue, a 43 -year -old clerk born in China, points out that she avoids talking about politics, but admits that the neighbors are divided between those who support Orriols and those who cannot or see her. “Everyone talks about it for good or worse,” he summarizes.
“I do not think about the mayor, it does not even deserve it,” replies Ali Yassine, former president of the Annour Mosque of Ripoll, where the terrorists of 17-A were radicalized. “We continue with our life, everything remains the same, I don’t want to give it more prominence.”
Jordi Hostench, who will become mayor of the CUP in May, explains that discord also reaches young people. “If you have the City Council legitimizing certain attitudes, in the end they take it to the street,” he says. “Some feel marked and criminalized and others buy Orriols speech against immigration.”
The presence of migrants is a reality in Ripoll and it is easy to cross with neighbors of foreign origin, but the foreigners represent 14% of the neighbors when the average of Catalonia is 21%.
Not all interpelled neighbors, in any case, participate in the confrontation. Anas (he does not want to reveal his last name), a 27 -year -old Moroccan municipal worker who arrived in Patera when he was only 12, is the maximum exponent of the sector who lives the brawl with some apathy.
“My life has not changed, all I do is work as always,” he says. “If they close the mosque then I pray in my house, I don’t care, this is a very small town and I am a bit tired of so much division.”
Who does not seem to import the controversy is to Orriols herself. “I am delighted to have put Ripoll on the map and that journalists come,” said Thursday in conversation with this newspaper. “They know Ripoll, sleep and eat here, they spend money.”
Two years of unfulfilled promises
Orriols management during its first two years has been marked by the impossibility of carrying out its promises. Also for full tension loaded in which it was usual to hear reproaches or disqualifications to the members of the opposition.
The mayor said that she would prevent migrants to register in the municipality, but the only thing she has achieved has been to impose obstacles that delay the process. He also promised that he would close all the mosques of the town, but the two in Ripoll remain open today.
“We have seen that he cannot do everything he says,” celebrates Yassine, former president of the Islamic community. “Luckily there are laws that prevent it.”
Orriols also defended in the past the disobedience to the Spanish institutions, but when the Electoral Board required it withdraw the stelae of both the City Council and the entrance of the municipality. In the latter case, it was herself who went at night with another member of Aliança Catalan to pick it up with a ladder.
Some neighbors interviewed as Rosa, 67, explain that the people are safer since the mayor Ultra took the rod of command and celebrate the expansion of the space in which retirees gather.
Other interviewees, on the other hand, recriminate episodes such as blackouts in lighting, the difficulty of accessing housing or attempt to close the main meeting point of the independence left in the municipality.
Family associations of the educational centers also demonstrated last October against the orriols cuts, which backed down and finally maintained free music classes for students of I4 and I5.
The mayor Ultra blames all these reproaches to the lack of budgets. “Now we can finally deploy our program,” he says, relieved after the failure of the motion of censure. “We will begin projects that will improve the daily life of neighbors.”
Brugarola, the neighbor who tries to agglutinate civil society contrary to Orriols, explains that her platform intends that the opposition to Orriols will leave her lethargy and the neighbors activate her “critical sense.”
“There are 70% of voters who did not support him,” he summarizes. “All the Democrats of the municipality must join around the values we share so that the people leave this paralysis.”
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